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Moto, Huawei Are Replacing the Android Keys With a Touchpad (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report written by Vlad Savov via The Verge: Huawei and Moto have both moved to a new type of home button, which isn't really a button but rather just a touch-sensitive surface. So far, so familiar, but the novelty is that they're now combining gestures and taps to turn the trio of Android shortcuts -- Back, Home, and Recent Apps -- into a one-button user interface. Huawei's approach is one tap to go back, long press to go home, and a swipe to bring up the multitasking menu. Of course, this wouldn't be Android without fragmentation, so Moto's method is slightly different (swipe left to go back, right for multitasking, and a tap to go home), but having tried both of them, I can say that they're improvements on the status quo and I'm glad the change is happening. For Android purists, this may all seem like an unnecessary distraction. Give me my familiar Android trio, it might be said, and leave me in peace. Which is fine and dandy, since both of the new phones, Huawei's P10 and Moto's G5, offer the option to bring the familiar software interface back.
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Moto's implementation sounds better to me. That said I'm not an Android user, I don't mind the way the iPhone does it but once they introduced the iPhone 7 I was hoping for some sort of back gesture support like this in the home button rather than the annoying tiny back "button" you get appearing in the top corner of the status bar. This seems like a much better solution assuming the gesture detection is reliable...seems like Google should have been on the ball with standardizing something like this.
This seems par for the course. With Google trying to make the device manufacturers stick to a UI that's closer to "stock Android," they have to differentiate themselves somehow. For example, on the Samsung phone I have now, the "home" and "multitask" buttons are on the opposite sides of the screen than they were for my Moto X. For some people, that would be a deal-breaker.
Breakfast served all day!
First you take away my buttons and give me stupid touch screens (ensuring my phone is useless as an MP3 player on my bike w/o a bluetooth dongle to add back the missing buttons). Now you're even taking those away?
This sorta junk _kinda_ works on expensive phones. But eventually it trickles down to the cheap sub $200 phones I buy and well, doesn't work. Just give me a damn 2 cent button already.
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"which isn't really a button but rather just a touch-sensitive surface. So far, so familiar," [...] "For Android purists, this may all seem like an unnecessary distraction. Give me my familiar Android trio, it might be said, and leave me in peace."
"familiar Android trio"? Give me back my separate hardware buttons, including the search button and get off my lawn you young whippersnapper!
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
>"For Android purists, this may all seem like an unnecessary distraction. "
Yes it is. The reference Nexus devices have been button-free for a long time now. There is no need for any home or back or multitasking buttons. Just make that bottom area of the phone MORE SCREEN and let the OS deal with it!
If so, I called believe these losers. It reminds me of Borland.
Oh good. Less screen area!
Now that all phones are basically identical (flat, and run Android or iOS), this completely trivial and meaningless shit is all that's left to differentiate them. If whether a phone has 1 or 3 buttons is important to you, you should get out of the room in your mom's basement more often.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Of course, this wouldn't be Android without fragmentation, so Moto's method is slightly different (swipe left to go back, right for multitasking, and a tap to go home), but having tried both of them, I can say that they're improvements on the status quo and I'm glad the change is happening. For Android purists, this may all seem like an unnecessary distraction.
This isn't fragmentation in the sense that it doesn't introduce something negative. Diversity and innovation make Android great. I've never owned a Huawei or Moto device and probably won't any time soon since my ZTE Axon 7 is still very new, but neither of these new ideas would scare me away form either company's phones.
I like having three dedicated capacitive "buttons," but one space to activate three functions isn't a bad idea. The fact that each of these companies is doing something unique isn't a dectractor, it gives user even more choice. If these don't work or don't sell, we'll only seem them on the current generation, so no harm done.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
It's an interesting move, but it doesn't sound like something that would have a major effect.
Personally, I like to keep functions separated and configurable... just because accidental gestures and commands are a plague to me. :P
My current phone, OnePlus 3, has the 2 touch buttons, they can be flipped, and regular functions like double tap or long press can be configured to do a bunch of different things the way you want... and they can also be disabled in favor of onscreen buttons too.
I already ended up disabling most of these regular functions because I accidentaly trigger them all the time. Oh well, clumsy fingers.
Menu Home Back are.
They still don't let most apps install to the SD card.
Forward button is totally missing, and it's a pain. Often leads to sucky experience in browsing for example... need to hunt through a menu to go forward. Come on, it's a computer. Why does it need to suck just because you hold it in your hand?
* Swipe left: back
* Swipe right: forward
* Tap for back
* Hold for list
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I have a Zuk Z2, it's been doing this for over a year now. Zuk is a small phone company that got eaten by Lenovo. Poor quality software but the Z2 is a great hardware platform and the custom ROMs are in great shape.
Real buttons are usually faster and easier than anything virtual--especially, when you are out and about.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
But what do we expect, from so-called 'UX designers'? They haven't got a clue how to design a user interface. Now all we have are cliquey designs that only those 'in the know' can actually use. This is wrong on so many levels it's beyond belief.
HP/Palm webOS and Jolla's Sailfish OS were asked for comments about Android's new gesture interface.
Their answer : yawn.
Moto's implementation sounds better to me.
...and used to be the standard mode of operation since Palm's Pre (webOS powered).
Jolla Phone (Sailfish OS) has a similar general approach to gesture, except that in order to save on screen estate, they abandon the idea of a dedicated gesture area, and instead use the screen (e.g.: you swipe the *whole app's* main area or title bar to do a "back", instead of swiping under it) and screen edges (e.g.: you swipe from the right edge to go or peek at multitasking, instead of in a gesture area).
Due to fitt's law such gesture-based approaches are much better than "hunt the button" presses.
(Much older than that, PalmOS used to have a gesture area. Most of the time it was used to draw glyphs (replacement for a keyboard), but a lot of simple shortcuts where possible ( "\" + "C" : copy, etc. and also other shortcut to jump to apps) )
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I'm sure people with visual handicaps are going to really HATE this.
Now, I don't know how TFS' companies are going to specifically implement it.
But based on my experience with other gesture based smartphone (Palm/HP webOS, Jolla Sailfish), this actually *improves* visibility.
With classical button interfaces, you need to hunt down a button to do an action. That's not that much complicated, but gives you a baseline.
And it's possible to do some without looking.
After the move to virtual buttons (as tons of modern android device have been doing), it becomes much *more* complicated, because you can't even count on tactile feed back to feel the shape of the button to be sure where/when to press. You need to visually check that your finger is hovering above the correct button.
(Small target area: bad according to Fitt's law).
On the other hand, gesture are much *simpler*. You move your finger in the general area (= large target area: better according to fitt's law), and just move it in a general direction (left, right, etc.), no small targets (= no bad, thank Fitt's).
Most of the gesture can be done without looking (and were on purpose designed so).
So a person with visual disabilities would be moving from a current tiresome virtual button interface (constantly checking visual feedback to be sure to click the intended button), to something which won't require any visual control at all (just slide the finger on the correct side of the device, and in the correct direction).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Yup, a phone with all those things is a guaranteed sale.
Touch interfaces are crap even for people with perfect eye sight.
Touch interfaces are crap, usually because they try to replicate button interfaces, poorly.
Worst offender : visual keyboards.
- physical keyboards work more or less, because your finger tips are equipped with a sense of touch.
you can feel the buttons under your finger, and know when you're about to hit what you want, the you feel the button getting pressed by your finger movement.
(See regular computer keyboards. See also older physical keyboard on phones (flip-out, slide-out, etc.) specially those with gum-drops style keys)
- on a visual keyboard, you have tons of small buttons densely packed.
your fingers need to jump allover the place, each time aiming for a small surface, all this "blindly" without any tactical feed-back to feel the keys passing by as the fingers seek, or the button being pressed.
And according to Fitt's law, this configuration (lots of movement all over the place aiming for very precise target areas) is absolutely dreadful.
You end up putting your finger in the general area where you think is the key you want to type, and hope that the autocorrect will manage to make some sense out of it.
Swype isn't much better from that regard. Even if you're not "pecking" with your finger, you still need to swipe in theory over the desired key, and there's still an autocorrect that needs to make sens out of it.
Gesture interfaces try to follow the logic behind Fitt's law and remove the worst offender :
- they try to eschew small targets that you need to aim at.
- Instead they either use a large "gesture area" (like HP/Palm webOS used to, or like is introduced to Android)
- or follow an adaptation of Fitt's 5 best optimal point, adapted for touch screens (the place your finger happens to already be is easy to reach, so gesture where you grab the whole app screen ; 4 edges are also easy to tactile-find) and use whole screen gestures (like Jolla's Sailfish OS )
No more pecking and hunting for small buttons. Only larger smooth motions that are easy to do even on a touch screen.
e.g.: Just swipe more-or-less horizontally, in the general left direction.
(Note that currently as of today, there aren't many gesture-based text inputs deployed in the wild.
"Graffiti" used to be a thing back in the Palm OS era.
Dasher is a PPM-based type of text input wiht word prediction that can target people with reduced mobility).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
well because Huawei is cheap AF and has a lot of good qualities for it's price. and also I live in a country that has no copyright fringment law and I can also download w/e app I want from <a href="http://brouz.ir">download APKs,Movies,Cracked Games,Softwares etc.</a> for free. so they can do w/e they want